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What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?

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  What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Marion <marion@facts.com> - 2025-08-28 22:16 +0000
    What other tasks do you do other than create pointless posts on usenet? MikeS <MikeS@fred.com> - 2025-08-29 20:22 +0100
    Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-29 23:47 +0000
    Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Andrew Smallshaw <andrews@sdf.org> - 2025-08-31 06:40 +0000
      Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Shadow <Sh@dowbr.invalid> - 2025-08-31 08:51 -0300
        Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? JJ <jj4public@outlook.com> - 2025-08-31 20:46 +0700
          Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Anthk GM <anthk@disroot.org> - 2026-05-23 08:20 +0000
            Re: What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-05-23 09:33 +0000

#2701 — What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?

What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?

[x] Print booklet format (pdfbook, pdfbooklet, enbooken, acrobat reader)
[x] Add or concatenate pages (pdftk, acrobat payware)
[x] Add signature (Adobe Reader Fill-and-sign sign-yourself tool)
[x] Archive sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat payware,fastone scroll capture)
[x] Compress PDFs (ImageMagick, PDFgear, rlvision)
[x] Convert PDF to MSOffice (PDFgear, Calibre for MS Word only)
[x] Convert PDF to MSWord (Calibre, PDFgear)
[x] Convert PDF to epub format (Calibre)
[x] Convert PDF to PostScript (Calibre, Poppler)
[x] Converts PDFs to HTML (poppler)
[x] Convert PDF to raster (Imagemagick,GhostScript,Poppler-pdftocairo)
[x] Convert PDF to vector (Inkscape, Poppler-pdftocairo)
[x] Converts PDFs to PPM/PGM/PBM image formats (poppler)
[x] Add text to existing pdf (Irfanview or Paint.NET plugins + Ghostscript)
[x] Minor text editing (Adobe Reader commenting, PDF-XChange Editor)
[x] Generate complex PDF using markup language (LaTeX via pdfTeX or LuaTeX)
[x] Embeds files into a PDF as attachments (poppler) 
[x] Extract images (PDFExchangeEditor, PDF Shaper, PDFgear, poppler, muPDF)
[x] Extract text (poppler) or mine textual & metadata (pdfminersix)
[x] Extracts embedded files (attachments) from a PDF (poppler)
[x] Fastest PDF readers (Sumatra or Foxit)
[x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
[x] List fonts used in a PDF (poppler)
[x] Metadata display on command line (poppler)
[x] Metadata removal (LibreOffice Writer, PDFgear offline)
[x] OCR, PDF-Xchange, freeOCR (paperfile.net), GOCR (jocr.sourceforge.net)
[x] Offline encrypt PDF with a password (pdfencrypt)
[x] Online shrink PDF <adobe.com/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html>
[x] PDF text to audio file (Balabolka)
[x] Delete pages (pdfsam, pdftk, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
[x] Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
[x] Reorder pages (pdftk, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
[x] Rotate pages (pdftk, mutool, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
[x] Remove restrictions (Ghostscript,Ghostview,ps2edit,pdfwrite,pdf2djvu)
[x] Separates a PDF into individual pages (poppler)
[x] Split PDFs (PDFgear, Poppler, Ghostscript) 
[x] Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk, PDFgear, Poppler, Ghostscript) 
[x] Tile PDFs (i.e., to print large posters) (Posterazor)
[x] Redact sensitive information (PDF-Xchange Editor, Adobe Acrobat Pro)
[x] Add watermarks or background layers (pdftk, PDFgear, PDFsam)
[x] Add bookmarks/TOC (jpdfbookmarks, LaTeX(hyperref), PDF-ExchangeEditor
[x] Flatten form fields (Ghostscript, Acrobat Pro)
[x] Embed audio/video into PDFs (Acrobat Pro, LaTeX (media9 package)
[x] Generate PDF from Markdown or HTML (Pandoc, wkhtmltopdf)
[x] Create fillable forms (LibreOffice Draw, Scribus, LaTeX (AcroTeX))
[x] Batch rename, convert, split, etc. (PDFsam, Poppler, Ghostscript)
[x] Extract annotations/comments (PDF-XChange Editor, Adobe Acrobat)
[x] Convert to OCR (Tesseract OCR, PDF-Xchange, ABBYY FineReader)
[x] Add hyperlinks/clickable buttons (LibreOffice,LaTeX,PDF-XChange Editor)
[x] Compare two PDFs side-by-side (DiffPDF, Acrobat Pro)
[x] Digitally sign with certificate-based signature (Foxit PDF Editor)
[x] Free PDF samples 
    <https://examplefile.com/document/pdf>
    <https://onlinetestcase.com/pdf-file/>
    <https://sample-files.com/documents/pdf/>
    <https://graydart.com/sample/documents/pdf>
    <https://freetestdata.com/document-files/pdf/>
    <https://getsamplefiles.com/sample-document-files/pdf>
    <https://learningcontainer.com/sample-pdf-files-for-testing/>
[?] What other tasks do you do to edit or modify a PDF file?

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#2707 — What other tasks do you do other than create pointless posts on usenet?

On 28/08/2025 23:16, Marion wrote:
> What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?
> 
> [x] Print booklet format (pdfbook, pdfbooklet, enbooken, acrobat reader)
> [x] Add or concatenate pages (pdftk, acrobat payware)
> [x] Add signature (Adobe Reader Fill-and-sign sign-yourself tool)
> [x] Archive sites (wkhtmltopdf, Acrobat payware,fastone scroll capture)
> [x] Compress PDFs (ImageMagick, PDFgear, rlvision)
> [x] Convert PDF to MSOffice (PDFgear, Calibre for MS Word only)
> [x] Convert PDF to MSWord (Calibre, PDFgear)
> [x] Convert PDF to epub format (Calibre)
> [x] Convert PDF to PostScript (Calibre, Poppler)
> [x] Converts PDFs to HTML (poppler)
> [x] Convert PDF to raster (Imagemagick,GhostScript,Poppler-pdftocairo)
> [x] Convert PDF to vector (Inkscape, Poppler-pdftocairo)
> [x] Converts PDFs to PPM/PGM/PBM image formats (poppler)
> [x] Add text to existing pdf (Irfanview or Paint.NET plugins + Ghostscript)
> [x] Minor text editing (Adobe Reader commenting, PDF-XChange Editor)
> [x] Generate complex PDF using markup language (LaTeX via pdfTeX or LuaTeX)
> [x] Embeds files into a PDF as attachments (poppler)
> [x] Extract images (PDFExchangeEditor, PDF Shaper, PDFgear, poppler, muPDF)
> [x] Extract text (poppler) or mine textual & metadata (pdfminersix)
> [x] Extracts embedded files (attachments) from a PDF (poppler)
> [x] Fastest PDF readers (Sumatra or Foxit)
> [x] Globally search & replace PDF text (Libre Office)
> [x] List fonts used in a PDF (poppler)
> [x] Metadata display on command line (poppler)
> [x] Metadata removal (LibreOffice Writer, PDFgear offline)
> [x] OCR, PDF-Xchange, freeOCR (paperfile.net), GOCR (jocr.sourceforge.net)
> [x] Offline encrypt PDF with a password (pdfencrypt)
> [x] Online shrink PDF <adobe.com/acrobat/online/compress-pdf.html>
> [x] PDF text to audio file (Balabolka)
> [x] Delete pages (pdfsam, pdftk, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
> [x] Renumber pages (Acrobat Reader)
> [x] Reorder pages (pdftk, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
> [x] Rotate pages (pdftk, mutool, PDF-XChange Editor, PDF Arranger)
> [x] Remove restrictions (Ghostscript,Ghostview,ps2edit,pdfwrite,pdf2djvu)
> [x] Separates a PDF into individual pages (poppler)
> [x] Split PDFs (PDFgear, Poppler, Ghostscript)
> [x] Merge PDFs (pdfsam, pdftk, PDFgear, Poppler, Ghostscript)
> [x] Tile PDFs (i.e., to print large posters) (Posterazor)
> [x] Redact sensitive information (PDF-Xchange Editor, Adobe Acrobat Pro)
> [x] Add watermarks or background layers (pdftk, PDFgear, PDFsam)
> [x] Add bookmarks/TOC (jpdfbookmarks, LaTeX(hyperref), PDF-ExchangeEditor
> [x] Flatten form fields (Ghostscript, Acrobat Pro)
> [x] Embed audio/video into PDFs (Acrobat Pro, LaTeX (media9 package)
> [x] Generate PDF from Markdown or HTML (Pandoc, wkhtmltopdf)
> [x] Create fillable forms (LibreOffice Draw, Scribus, LaTeX (AcroTeX))
> [x] Batch rename, convert, split, etc. (PDFsam, Poppler, Ghostscript)
> [x] Extract annotations/comments (PDF-XChange Editor, Adobe Acrobat)
> [x] Convert to OCR (Tesseract OCR, PDF-Xchange, ABBYY FineReader)
> [x] Add hyperlinks/clickable buttons (LibreOffice,LaTeX,PDF-XChange Editor)
> [x] Compare two PDFs side-by-side (DiffPDF, Acrobat Pro)
> [x] Digitally sign with certificate-based signature (Foxit PDF Editor)
> [x] Free PDF samples
>      <https://examplefile.com/document/pdf>
>      <https://onlinetestcase.com/pdf-file/>
>      <https://sample-files.com/documents/pdf/>
>      <https://graydart.com/sample/documents/pdf>
>      <https://freetestdata.com/document-files/pdf/>
>      <https://getsamplefiles.com/sample-document-files/pdf>
>      <https://learningcontainer.com/sample-pdf-files-for-testing/>
> [?] What other tasks do you do to edit or modify a PDF file?

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#2712

On Thu, 28 Aug 2025 22:16:25 -0000 (UTC), Marion wrote:

> [x] Converts PDFs to HTML (poppler)
> [x] Separates a PDF into individual pages (poppler)

Note that the “F” stands for “format”, not “file”. So we do not
operate on “a PDF” or “PDFs”, we operate on “a PDF file” or “PDF
files”.

> [?] What other tasks do you do to edit or modify a PDF file?

That’s more like it.

How about automatic generation of multi-page collections of
font/colour/graphic samples, like this
<https://www.deviantart.com/default-cube/art/X11-Colours-Booklet-881889920>
or this
<https://www.deviantart.com/default-cube/art/Cairo-Samples-891127122>?

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#2713

On 2025-08-28, Marion <marion@facts.com> wrote:
> What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?

Play Doom.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/doom_delivered_in_a_pdf/

-- 
Andrew Smallshaw
andrews@sdf.org

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#2714

On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 06:40:17 -0000 (UTC), Andrew Smallshaw
<andrews@sdf.org> wrote:

>On 2025-08-28, Marion <marion@facts.com> wrote:
>> What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?
>
>Play Doom.
>
>https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/doom_delivered_in_a_pdf/

	Now that is scary. Probably deliberately so. Never use a PDF
viewer that allows javascript....
	[]'s
--
Don't be evil - Google 2004
We have a new policy  - Google 2012
Google Fuchsia - 2021

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#2715

On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 08:51:43 -0300, Shadow wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 06:40:17 -0000 (UTC), Andrew Smallshaw
> <andrews@sdf.org> wrote:
> 
>>On 2025-08-28, Marion <marion@facts.com> wrote:
>>> What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?
>>
>>Play Doom.
>>
>>https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/doom_delivered_in_a_pdf/
> 
> 	Now that is scary. Probably deliberately so. Never use a PDF
> viewer that allows javascript....
> 	[]'s

It's disturbing. Only a wacko would have come up with such misusing idea.
It's a slippery slope which, with a little nudge, can easily fall into the
dark side and do real damage.

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#2726

On 2025-08-31, JJ <jj4public@outlook.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 08:51:43 -0300, Shadow wrote:
>> On Sun, 31 Aug 2025 06:40:17 -0000 (UTC), Andrew Smallshaw
>> <andrews@sdf.org> wrote:
>> 
>>>On 2025-08-28, Marion <marion@facts.com> wrote:
>>>> What other tasks do you do that you need free PDF editing tools to do?
>>>
>>>Play Doom.
>>>
>>>https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/14/doom_delivered_in_a_pdf/
>> 
>> 	Now that is scary. Probably deliberately so. Never use a PDF
>> viewer that allows javascript....
>> 	[]'s
>
> It's disturbing. Only a wacko would have come up with such misusing idea.
> It's a slippery slope which, with a little nudge, can easily fall into the
> dark side and do real damage.

His older "brother" format from the same company, PostScript, already
was turing complete; you could do anything from GhostScript,
even play ZMachine text adventure games as someone built
an interpreter made in PostScript. You can play Zork I-III
(and more games like Tristam Island, or Calypso.z3) with 'zmachine.ps'.

gs zmachine.ps -- your_game.z3

Also, chess:

https://seriot.ch/software/pschess.html

Usage: 

gs -DNOSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile="%d.pdf" pschess_compact.ps

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#2727

On Sat, 23 May 2026 08:20:47 -0000 (UTC), Anthk GM wrote:

> His older "brother" format from the same company, PostScript,
> already was turing complete; you could do anything from GhostScript,
> even play ZMachine text adventure games as someone built an
> interpreter made in PostScript.

PDF obviously originated as a way to repurpose the graphics model
while chucking away the programming-language part.

The graphics model was never good for anything other than putting
marks on paper -- certainly not interactive on-screen graphics (as
they tried to do with Display PostScript).

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